Revelation 00
by Warriorsong
Summary: REVERSIONED. Shinji was faced with a choice. Do as he always has and do what others expect of him or what he tells himself he mustn't do. Running away is sometimes an option.


**Revelation 0.0**

R E V E R S I O N E D

A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction

By Nicholas Paul Clark (Warriorsong)

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Revelation 0.0

Wasteland Of My Soul

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Naked. Alone. It felt right for some reason, the sensation of being weak and harmless in the scope of something far greater and meaningful than you could ever hope to attain. It felt like a memory creeping back to the forefront of his mind. But with the memories came the pain. The pain of his soul, his heart and his body.

The young boy groaned. The air was harsh, like thousands of insects ate into his skin with the precision of a doctor's needle. Warm too, but not like the cloying uterine warmth of the LCL fluid, but the exposed warmth of being on the baked earth too long, exposed to the elements that made up the baser nature of the world.

Eyes shuddered, the rays of muted light cracking through his dirty eyelids with unwavering persistency. Muted light that hurt his eyes. Unable and unwilling to move, he let the pain of awakening wash through him as with all the pain he had ever felt.

The sky was blue. Dull flat blue, dirty on the edges, like it had been burnt away. But it was a familiar sky. The Tokyo sky.

Shocked, he struggled to bring his body alert, threshing his shoulders to pull his torso upright.

The battered skyline of Tokyo-3 stretched off as far as he could see, curving outward from him on an inverted curve. Buildings tilted like macabre teeth jutting from filthy jaws, broken and rotten in an evil sneer. The burnt edge of sky was the raw edge of his lone grave. He could see the ragged wounds of subways and rolling platforms, oozing rails and treadmills from their earthen capillaries like coagulated blood. Like an egg, the earth had caved in, exposing sky to the black shrouded depths of Terminal Dogma.

The divine fire had destroyed the Babylon of NERV, sending Hell to its doorstep rather than the other way around.

Guilt - his most trusted friend. He had caused this. He knew that now. He didn't want to be accepted. He didn't want to be known. He was a coward; he wanted to hide, run away from the confrontation that had been forced upon him. He didn't want to be judged. He wasn't worth it, wasn't worth anything, didn't belong, didn't deserve to belong. He was meant to be alone.

Slowly the tears tracked through the fine dust that covered his face. Cold. The heat had gone from this place, just as soon as it left his heart. It was all cold now. He had made the wrong choice. When it had really mattered he had failed. Failed himself, failed his father, failed his mother, and failed the world.

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Pity and guilt ravaged him as the cold soaked through his gooseflesh into his bones. Automated, staggering like a marionette, his body, piloting the stunned mind, stumbled down the rubble that was the altar of his sacrifice. In a kilometre deep wound, the self appointed cancer made its way to the bleeding earth and to what all humans seek in misery and despair. Comfort.

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Wonder. Silent it crashed through her body, the sensation of dust euphoria against her bare skin. It all sang to her, the desolation, the pain and the destruction. It all made her feel things. Things she couldn't begin to understand. Things that made her body shake and her chest heave. Things that made her dizzy and light-headed.

Things that she knew by name but didn't know by association and experience. Fear, sorrow, anxiety. These were what confused her the least. These were familiar from before she had slept. But the others, the water in her eyes, the curl of her lips, the lyrical rumbling in her throat. Tears, happiness, laughter. Joy.

It was incorrect. Wrong. Doubt. Again something new and something remembered. Him. Flashes of him in her mind. All the strange emotions; emotions, yes that was what they were. All the strange emotions he knew so well. She needed to find him. He felt them more than she had, more than she ever could. He would need to know he wasn't alone.

Joy again. Alone. She wasn't alone anymore. She wasn't singular. She wasn't just an aspect in a greater scheme of a single individual. She was a her, a person. A member of something greater. She would find these others and share what she had learnt. He would be there too. He would be sad, and she could show him how to be happy.

Wonder. Everything was so new and so old at the same time. Like a sepia photograph given colour. But at the same time it seemed like the colour had run out like a watercolour in the rain, blurred and bleached into abstraction.

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Numb. Still numb. One numbness; into another and then this new. Weak. She felt weak. She was weak.

Weakness is to be human. Humanity is weak by nature. Strength comes from overcoming weakness. She had hidden it, run away from it and it had made her angry. Anger that ate at her soul like a parasite and caused her to lash out at the world. Lash out at those she was most like. Most like her, yet different in the way they dealt with it. Guilt and pain into anger. Guilt and pain into self-loathing and melancholy. It made little difference. Destructive. She could see that now, but accepting it would require more than just knowing it. Changing it would be a constant battle.

And it came full circle. Run from the battle as she had run in the past or face it now, and defeat it. Or be defeated herself. Either way she could grow. Not all battles can be won. Blindly believing that they can would kill her. But not all battles are made to be lost. Character defined by accepting both victory and defeat? It seemed hypocritical to her in its duplicity.

But if it was true and wasn't her fault, why be the victim, the defeated. Why not use it to learn and not make that mistake again. Make amends for the victims she had defeated herself. Or where they, those that she saw as being victims when she was just as weak, if not weaker than they? She was the hypocrite. She had judged them and been judged by herself in turn as unworthy. Numb again.

Numbness. Weakness. Overcoming weakness. Standing up and moving on, even if it all seems like its all gone to shit.

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Shock. Surprise. This wasn't right. The man sat, his legs spread before him. One dirty hand scratched his stubbled chin; the other massaged his left breast. Not right.

Loud. Red. Ended. Not begun again. Silent and dark. Was this death? He didn't believe in heaven and hell, cynicism had killed that fantasy when he had made his pact with the devils that dressed as men. But he was here. Was. Definite. Full stop.

Why? It made no sense. None of it. It never did, not since that day. Maybe it was the dream and this was the waking. Or was it opposite. Maybe he was the dream. Maybe it was his nightmare and he was trapped in it, lost in the loudness of that final red.

Makes no sense even in that sense. He would find out. Dream or not, it was his and he was it. Dreaming the dream or the dream dreaming him? It mattered little, it just was.

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Sorrow. Lost chances, lost opportunities and lost connections. Loss was what made her the woman she was. A life built on loss was not a life but an empty vessel. Just like building an empty vessel to protect life would create more loss.

Whether it be trust, friendship, respect or love. Love? Loss could make less or make a compensative change to amend. She had made to change but had lost even more in her quest to succeed. Winning and losing. The same thing but viewed differently. And that was it. She had one view. Did they have another? How many views where there altogether? Was she any less her if he viewed her in a different light? Or by him? Or even her? How did she see herself?

She was lost.

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Regret. One chance weighed against another. One person weighed against another. Wife and son. Dead wife and son. Dead wife, no son. Lost in the past of regrets and missed roads to travel. Stuck on something he could only have marginally effected and lost to the one he could have affected in a more profound way. Past and present scarred for the chance passed up in a storm of regret and trying to fix the already been, when it had already been set in stone, the die of fate cast against him. The future could be influenced. Could be made better, could be used to ease the regret.

Sadness. She had missed this, his wife, she had missed their son become a man. Sadness. That he had also missed it, even though he had been there alongside him the entire time. His son. Not a tool. Not an extension of him and his will. An extension of him and his wife. A being made of them both. Unique.

Unique. An extension of her. That was a past mistake. Wrong to cast the hands of time back for his own selfish needs when he had a more pressing responsibility to deal with his child's. His children now. Son and daughter. He had used them both. As tools to fix his past, his error, his loss.

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Horror. Disgust. At aiming to become unlike the one she despised most she had become as a devil amongst devils.

Vilified. Part of something that had corrupted and destroyed lives in an effort to better them. The safety of the many gained at the cost of the few. Few that were more precious and more delicate than most. Raping the future to ordain a present set to their, her, expectations and requirements. Repentance. But if she had known it was wrong, why did she continue? Did she care about them? Did she only care about herself? Had she made herself less important in the pursuit of a goal that would have been better achieved and at less cost had she remained as true as they were. Unmoulded, uncorrupted. Innocent. Innocence was lost and it disgusted her. Horrified her. She had taken that innocence. Guided by others and acting as a puppet she had been the scalpel of the mad scientist.

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Confusion. It hadn't made sense in a lot of ways. In any ways. Things just happened so fast and out of control he felt so...

Ineffectual. That wasn't it. It had just happened and he hadn't had any power over the situation. None of them did really, now that he thought about it. He didn't blame his friend. He didn't really blame anybody. Maybe he would lay down the blame one day like his friend had on his father, but he was too swept away to make any decision about it.

And he couldn't grasp it still. Broken he seemed to be, body and mind. Like a toy with its limbs twisted by a child throwing a tantrum, he had just taken it, as really, there wasn't fuck all he could do about it.

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Dirty rags and cast-offs clad the groups of creatures that emerged from the tunnels as the sun rose over the rim of their once great city, their bastion against unknown deities of destruction. Reasoning beasts they were, clad in the raiment of their own destructive nature and wondering why, rationalising who was at fault, when really man is the one to blame. Emotion and reasoning had made him the greater beast but in his desire, will and anger, had cast him to being one of the lesser.

Angel or devil, based solely on his actions.

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Disclaimers

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Standard disclaimers apply

Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji Ikari and related characters were created by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and are copyright Project EVA, Gainax, NAS, Tokyo TV and ADV Films. If any of this information is incorrect or absent, I offer my most humble apologies. No copyright infringement is intended, this is merely a work of fan fiction. I am in no way affiliated to any of these organizations, companies or individuals. Thank you for reading.

Written 21st July 2002. Finished 1st October 2002. By Nicholas Paul Clark (Warriorsong). Reversioned 9th January 2008. Yes that's rights, a post Third Impact Story. And the difference is that the spirits of man never touched, never achieved Instrumentality. Shinji chose to run away, resist the idea rather than do as he used to and simply do what he was told to. And you now what, either way he can't be faulted. That sort of decision isn't right to load onto a fifteen year old kid, much less an adult. I don't blame him. Tell me you wouldn't have run away yourself.


End file.
